Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most experienced business commentators. Alan has been a trusted source of investment advice to Australians for many years, and in 2005 he founded Eureka Report - Australia’s #1 online investment report. Along with Robert Gottliebsen and Stephen Bartholomeusz, Alan also founded Business Spectator, the popular business news and commentary website. Alan is the regular finance presenter on the ABC News and producer of the popular nightly graph (or two).

Calculations suggest Labor's 50 per cent renewable energy target will cost households an awful lot less than a 15 per cent GST. The reason for the small cost comes down to making a proper comparison with the likely alternative option.

Labor's announcement of a 50% Renewable Energy Target by 2030 sounds ambitious. But if combined with a push on energy efficiency we could hit 50% by just maintaining the annual rate of renewable energy installations we're already on track to do for 2020.

The Coalition has wasted no time trying to link Labor's big renewables announcement with the carbon price scare campaign. Meanwhile Labor knows renewables are very popular, the complete opposite of the carbon price. Get set for depressingly simplistic slogans.

The reason there is little incentive to export power to the grid is because as far as the poles and wires businesses are concerned it doesn't matter whether a generator is 100 kilometres away or just 10 metres up the road. A new regulatory rule could change this.

The Environment Minister is now resorting to a 2nd reading speech to suggest the government’s demand that the clean energy bank not fund wind and rooftop solar is nothing more than ensuring it fulfils its intended purpose.

In addition to its solar plans and afforestation efforts, India - unlike advanced nations - has seized on the falling oil price to lift petrol taxes, shifting drastically from a reverse carbon price to a positive one.

The solar resource, plus underlying power prices, is high in Queensland and there’s still some reasonable power demand growth thanks to the start-up of LNG plants. It may explain the games power gen-tailers are playing.

The CEO of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation has pointed to a major design flaw with the RET that suggests it could end in tears for investors. History suggests he’s partly right but ultimately wrong.

Restricting the CEFC from investing in wind and rooftop solar has been seen as helping out the coal industry. Yet there’s the curious possibility it might equally be about helping out mates in the renewable energy industry.